Just saw "The Road to Mecca" by South African playwright Athol Fugard, done by the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee. It is an incredibly textured played. Each character has numerous positive and negative characteristics. And the play takes up many significant social issues--abortion, apartheid/racism, religious intolerance, feminism--without actually being "about" those issues. Most of the drama of the play falls along two axes: faith--freedom and love--trust.

It must be a very strenuous play for the two main female characters. They are on stage and speaking virtually throughout. The CBT production was done with South African accents (though none of the actors is from there). They did an admirable job--not 100 per cent convincing throughout--but better than many English accents we've heard at CBT recently.